i hold these truths to be self-evident
by RedSkyNight
Summary: Nice isn't always so nice. Episode 7-centric.


**Summary:** _Nice isn't always so nice. Episode 7-centric._

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_**i hold these truths to be self-evident**_

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A day, just any day, nothing specific or particularly remarkable. Job, just like any other, with drama and intrigue and injured parties and artificial complications, and reality stepping in to make it all that much more complicated. People undermining his efforts, people looking to him to solve their missteps and problems, people looking at him like he's a miracle and helping him to help them.

He's a detective, a private detective, but sometimes his detection skills make him see more than he wants, and then he privately wants to spend time away from it all before he starts thinking the fast path is better than the slow one. Yeah, he knows, knows he's _some _detective.

His minimum is speed, sonic and unstoppable. A blink and you miss it sort of thing. Five feet (_five, four, three, two, one_), and he can knock back anyone or anything in his way. Give him a pair of earphones, a snap to start off with, and he'll zoom away and save the day. Sometimes he has a friend to play it all out with, Murasaki and his super strength, maybe Birthday and Ratio (rarely one or the other, apart) with their super sense and electric abilities, sometimes it's Hajime who could probably beat them all into the ground if she looked away from her meals for more than a second, and sometimes it's Art.

Art, impossible Art, who graduated with top scores from an academy of people with super powers, without any (except his pure, iron will) to call his own. Art who is wary of him, who is _rightfully_ angry at him, because _High_ and _Mighty_ Nice couldn't take a second, which he has plenty of, and consider what it's like from the other side. There are those without minimums, and situations such as those that have been cropping up lately are not the norm in their eyes. People are dead because of minimums; people are gaining powers that people are already wary of in those that are born with them, and people are causing crime with these powers they are not supposed to have. People are worried and wondering and acting out of sorts. And whose job is it to assuage their fears and apprehend the dastardly? Who do they expect to do the impossible? Who expects himself to do the impossible to do the impossible? Art.

And there is Nice, who looked at everything and considered everything, feeling entitled as he did so, and who promptly undermined his best friend without a second thought. Nice, who Art probably feels he can't trust because, bias? That's been Nice all over in the past couple of-days?-weeks?-months? It's been, and this is a laugh, nice figuring out the case that's been stretching out over the weeks recently. There have been sacrifices, there has been death and destruction and revelation and tragedy. But it's all a pattern he can see, it's all been unwinding at different points, with different pieces and players, and this is the sort of challenge his mind thrives on.

He's already come to understand the realities of minimums, their results and their presence. Nice is accustomed to it all, because lord knows he's aware of what he's capable of without anyone to hold him back, without morals and memories and friends. Everything isn't has shocking to someone who's as informed as him, someone who is as calculating as him. And, the man named Moral? That's a piece of data he himself has had for years, no need to visit the sandwich-stealer he gets his info from. There was no point in revealing the obvious except to brag and assume he'd be let in on the case, not when his friend was stressed and certain that everything had to be under his purview. He should have considered, High and Mighty Nice should have considered what this would do to him, to his friend already walking the tightrope with his _generous_ hand outstretched for him.

Everything is a part of a greater puzzle coming together, everyone is a piece, but Nice went and forgot that for all his ability and strength and knowledge and understanding, Art is a person, one who doesn't look at the world the way he does, one that doesn't get it the way he does, and it's a miracle they've been friends for so long if Nice has been such an insufferable idiot for just as long. There are times that Art sees pure tragedy when Nice sees possibility and redemption and reality. They usually are able to reconcile their differences and work together efficiently, but he saw someone having fun where Art saw another victim, and nothing has been the same after that. They haven't really broached the topic, and with the case going on as it has, Nice thought they wouldn't need to until later. But, oh man was he wrong.

Art has met Moral who Nice remembers, or at least tries to not to and ends up remembering anyway. That scientist who was oh so very interested in his minimum abilities and who praised him for his evaluations long after they had already ended. Moral who he left behind, along with the rest of Facultas Academy because he was Becoming Part of the Problem, something like him and the rest of the merry band that ruled the academy, and he needed to get away before he stopped being Nice anymore.

Art is everything his department needs, everything the public needs, but he's still just a man, a man who can't do everything all at once, a man who can come up with his own conclusions and solve his own cases without Nice coming in and playing merciful angel by laying out a few more pieces for his perusal. It has passed the point of helping and become Deigning to Share Information, and Helping my Lessers, and that is just Not Okay. The case has been getting to him too, in its own way, and while his reaction to things is different from Art's, it doesn't mean he can play merciful minimum user and go along his merry way without repercussions.

Space, giving Art some space would have been ideal. Art's been stuck in a pit of his own confusion and hatred for a while. He knows, Nice knows, that going to Facultas did something to Art, who is so self-assured and composed that one would've been excused for not noticing his discomfort with the recent cases. If what he thinks is true, and it probably is, Moral's probably been playing a game of 'let's share minimums' and done something like point out how Art could've been better with one, fit in better with him and his friends better with one, take on the department he heads better with one, become a better person with one. But Nice knows that in that way lays madness.

Art, and it hurts to think that this little thought could've been shared at some point during their occasional heart-to-heart talks, isn't incomplete or inadequate or somehow lesser for his not-minimum. He's mighty and strong and steadfast and loyal, and whatever this situation that's been stirring within him, just made worse by him, Nice, the high and mighty, it's something based not on reality but the twisted perceptions that have been borne in the hearts of man ever since the discovery of minimums, and even before that, when one person was declared better and more complete due to chance and circumstance.

The point is that everyone can be petty, everyone doesn't always work as hard as they should, everyone can be jealous and lazy and expect as a right what others would give their lives for, but Art isn't these things. The problem is that Art generally isn't any of those things, but he thinks he should be better, could be better, because he wants to help everyone, stop every crime, and generally make the world a better place. But it isn't his lack that's a problem.

As his best friend, he should have done something before this break in character, before Art had gotten so fed up with him that they had to separate rather than choose to part ways until they meet again. Before Art felt he needed to keep pushing beyond his own breaking point to solve this case which is bothering him so much, and all on his own too.

Murasaki's been shooting pointed, four-eyed glances at him, and making even pointier comments about this sad state of affairs, and High and Mighty Nice knows. He knows. It's why he's frustrated with their case, a playboy and the groupies he's wronged by touching their precious idols. It's stupid, the kind of stupid he's usually used to, but it's digging into him in ways that nothing has for a while. No one seeing eye-to-eye, no one compromising, just full out force and stupid pride getting in the way. All of this is something he's seeing as he rewinds the events that have led up to this, and it just makes him angry. But he can't allow himself to be angry, so he gets even angrier. Botching jobs like this doesn't usually happen, but he'll have to make this up later. Maybe the next job, whenever that may be.

So he'll call, and hopefully with all the truths laid bare, they can be friends that support each other again, rather than a jerk and his merciful friend. Hopefully Art will pick up, and that will be that.

And maybe Nice, the not so high and mighty, will share what's been bothering him about this case as well, and their record will go undisturbed-the rogue detective agency and lawful officer succeeding against the forces of the universe once again.

Art just needs to answer.

And if it doesn't work today, which it doesn't seem to be, he'll just try again tomorrow.

And after that, Nice will try until it does. That's what friends do, after all.

It's what they do and will do in the future, as friends after all this time.


End file.
